This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Sayings of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot or Pirqe Aboth) NULL
Who is wise? The man who can learn something from every man. Who is strong? The man who overcomes his passion. Who is rich? The man who is content with his fate. Whom do men honor? The man who honors his fellow man.
Character | Fate | Honor | Man | Men | Passion | Wise | Learn |
Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful; the proud are made sour by the remembrance and the vain silent.
William A. Scully, fully Bishop William Aloysius Scully
Knowledge alone does not stop men from evil. The poor and the ignorant are not the greatest sinners. Man's mind may unfold, his intellect grow more keen, his understanding more profound, yet side by side with this may be a moral degeneration such as existed in pagan Greece and Rome.
George Savile, fully Sir George Savile, 1st Marquis of Halifax
Popularity is a crime from the moment it is sought; it is only a virtue when men have it whether they will or not.
Character | Crime | Men | Popularity | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves.
Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith
Freedom is a dreadful thing unless it goes hand in hand with responsibility. Democracy among men is a specter except when the hearts of men are mature.
Character | Democracy | Freedom | Men | Responsibility |
Wherever there is lost the consciousness that every man is an object of concern for us just because he is a man, civilization and morals are shaken, and the advance to fully developed inhumanity is only a question of time.
Character | Civilization | Consciousness | Inhumanity | Man | Object | Question | Time |
Jean Charles Sismondi, fully Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Whenever we cease to hate, to despite, and to persecute those who think differently from ourselves, whenever we look on them calmly, we find among them men of pure hearts and unbiased judgments, who, reasoning on the same data with ourselves, have arrived at different conclusion on the subject of the spiritual world.